java physics

• One of the primary results from the field of spectroscopy was the discovery of how the energy outputed by an object (its spectrum) changes with temperature
• Stefan-Boltzmann law: the amount of energy emitted from a body increases with higher temperature
• Wien's law: the peak of emission moves to bluer light as temperature increases
• the energy outputed by an object (a star, a piece of metal, a human body) takes on a particular shape called Planck's curve, shown in the following plot of energy versus wavelength
• notice that all objects emit all kinds of electromagnetic radiation. Except, cool objects (like humans) emit very little at short wavelengths (x-rays) and long wavelengths (radio). Most of our energy comes out in the infrared (our peak emission is at 10 microns)

Planck was led to this radically new insight by trying to explain the puzzling observation of the amount of electromagnetic radiation emitted by a hot body and, in particular, the dependence of the intensity of this incandescent radiation on temperature and on frequency. The quantitative aspects of the incandescent radiation constitute the radiation laws.

The Austrian physicist Josef Stefan found in 1879 that the total radiation energy per unit time emitted by a heated surface per unit area increases as the fourth power of its absolute temperature T (Kelvin scale). This means that the Sun's surface, which is at T = 6,000 K, radiates per unit area (6,000/300)4 = 204 = 160,000 times more electromagnetic energy than does the same area of the Earth's surface, which is taken to be T = 300 K. In 1889 another Austrian physicist, Ludwig Boltzmann, used the second law of thermodynamics to derive this temperature dependence for an ideal substance that emits and absorbs all frequencies. Such an object that absorbs light of all colors looks black, and so was called a blackbody.

The wavelength or frequency distribution of blackbody radiation was studied in the 1890s by Wilhelm Wien of Germany. It was his idea to use as a good approximation for the ideal blackbody an oven with a small hole. Any radiation that enters the small hole is scattered and reflected from the inner walls of the oven so often that nearly all incoming radiation is absorbed and the chance of some of it finding its way out of the hole again can be made exceedingly small. The radiation coming out of this hole is then very close to the equilibrium blackbody electromagnetic radiation corresponding to the oven temperature. Wien found that the radiative energy dW per wavelength interval d has a maximum at a certain wavelength m and that the maximum shifts to shorter wavelengths as the temperature T is increased, as illustrated in the figure below.

Wien's law of the shift of the radiative power maximum to higher frequencies as the temperature is raised expresses in a quantitative form commonplace observations. Warm objects emit infrared radiation, which is felt by the skin; near T = 950 K a dull red glow can be observed; and the color brightens to orange and yellow as the temperature is raised. The tungsten filament of a light bulb is T = 2,500 K hot and emits bright light, yet the peak of its spectrum is still in the infrared according to Wien's law. The peak shifts to the visible yellow when the temperature is T = 6,000 K, like that of the Sun's surface.